EDITORIAL: Spirit of compromise is somewhere, if only for a fleeting instant

As President Barack Obama and top congressional leaders returned to Washington, they were saying all the right things, with their aides claiming to detect a new spirit of compromise in the air. Obama devoted time to conferring with congressional leaders before he returned to Washington.

To other observers, the new spirit of compromise proved elusive, since, stripped of the conciliatory tone, the parties seemed to be right back where they were before they left Washington.

Lawmakers may have heard the voters, but the voters seemed to say different things.

House Speaker John Boehner raised Democratic hopes when he said, "Republicans are willing to accept new revenues." That seemed to suggest that he accepted Obama adviser David Axelrod's conclusion from the election that the voters favored higher taxes on those earning more than $250,000. But as Boehner explained his supposedly new position on new revenues, more caveats emerged.

The increased revenue, he said, must come "as the byproduct of a growing economy, energized by a simpler, cleaner, fairer tax code with fewer loopholes and lower rates for all." This is never-never talk.

Everybody is in favor of tax reform until the actual details emerge of how to bring it about, and then everybody and their lobbyists are opposed to some element of reform. The few times we've had genuine tax overhaul, it has been the work of exceptional legislators in exceptional times. We are in an exceptional time now, though we wonder where to find those exceptional lawmakers.

Lame-duck presidents traditionally seem to have two years in which they are capable of major accomplishments. But Boehner has been hamstrung by his rambunctious Republican caucus. However, voters trimmed some of the wilder members of that caucus. The tea party is in low standing because, for the second time, it cost Republicans control of the Senate.

Additionally, Obama offered to meet with Mitt Romney to discuss how the two parties could work together, but truth be told, Romney likely is done with politics. He lost the GOP's best-funded effort to take the White House from a man who by every traditional political statistical measure was doomed to lose it. So he is in no position to broker a compromise over the head of Boehner and Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell.

Indeed, if there is to be a compromise, it will be up to Boehner and Obama.

When members of Congress return to Washington this week, for a few fleeting milliseconds they may allow themselves to think maybe the problems they left behind might have been solved in their absence. But still looming is the "fiscal cliff" of tax increases and automatic budget cuts. Obama is in position to wield considerable influence simply by doing nothing.

Hope truly does spring quadrennially in Washington, but it takes only a week or so for reality to set in.